Demon, come and cultivate for me.

"Please, release my daughter and let me go to serve the mountain god."

The woman knelt beneath the altar, her forehead striking the bluestone slabs with a resounding thud.

Behind them was a group of villagers in tattered clothes, all of them looking pale and sickly.

They carried an offering table, which was filled with chicken, duck, fish, meat, incense, candles, and other offerings.

Zhou Chu stood on the altar, wearing a bizarre and distorted Nuo god mask.

He stared blankly at everything below, his mind a complete void.

He remembered that he had just pushed a little girl who was about to run into the lucky charm on the road, and then he himself was unfortunately hit and thrown into the air by the lucky charm.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in this godforsaken place.

As memories flooded his mind, the scene before him became increasingly familiar.

The original owner of this body was also called Zhou Chu, who was the village shaman and was responsible for organizing the sacrificial rites.

Today is the fifth day of the eighth lunar month, the birthday of the Mountain God.

According to custom, a woman is offered as a sacrifice, along with three kinds of sacrificial animals, in order to ask the mountain god to spare him from disaster.

The woman kneeling before them was the mother of the woman who was to be sacrificed.

Zhou Chu turned his head to look behind him and saw a dark-skinned, thin young man holding a wooden stick, glaring at him angrily.

Next to the dark-skinned, thin young man was a girl dressed in a red wedding gown, tied to a wooden frame with hemp rope.

The girl looked to be about seventeen or eighteen years old, but her face turned ashen with fright.

This family was from the same village as Zhou Chu's original self. The young man was named Xu Kun, and his sister was named Xu Yao.

Such a beautiful girl, and she's going to be given to the mountain god to be ruined?

"What a tragedy!"

Zhou Chu suddenly felt a headache, not just psychological, but also physical.

"Ouch!" He touched the large bump on his head and gasped in pain.

Zhou Chu thought it was just bad luck that it hurt so much.

Only now do I realize that it was Xu Kun, the man in front of me, who hit me with a stick.

What a dark start.

The original owner was also useless; he was killed with a single blow.

Zhou Chu had never been at a disadvantage in fights since he was a child, and as he grew up and mingled in society, he became known for his ruthlessness.

He had only just transmigrated when he was hit on the head with a stick, which made him furious.

"Did you hit him?" Zhou Chu asked Xu Kun, rubbing his head.

Before the other party could answer, Zhou Chu flashed forward and delivered a hook punch to Xu Kun's abdomen.

"Brother—!" the girl exclaimed in surprise upon seeing this.

Unable to withstand the immense force, Xu Kun stumbled back several steps before finally losing his footing and falling off the altar.

Zhou Chu stared at Xu Kun, who had fallen to the ground, and shouted:

"Are you a good fighter?"

"If you're so good at fighting, why don't you go fight the mountain god? Why are you fighting me?"

Xu Kun sat on the ground, clutching his abdomen, speechless.

He did want to go and fight the mountain god.

After ten years of rigorous martial arts training, he has just entered the initial stage of martial arts, yet he cannot even defeat the mountain god's lackey, the shaman, and was instead nearly vomited blood by a single punch from him.

With this kind of strength, how can they possibly fight against the mountain god?

If his master, who was at the peak of his cultivation, were still alive, he could definitely defeat the mountain god.

But the grass on Master's grave is now three feet high...

The woman, who had been kneeling on the ground, crawled a few steps, embraced the collapsed Xu Kun, and burst into tears.

"My son, how are you... If anything happens to you and your siblings, I, your mother, will not live on..."

The girl on the altar also began to weep:

"I'm willing to marry the mountain god, I'm willing, please release my brother and my mother... Waaah..."

"Shut up!" Zhou Chu was annoyed by the noise.

"Get out, get out, all of you!"

Faced with such a scene of life and death, Zhou Chu could not remain indifferent.

As soon as he said this, the villagers below the altar objected, and they all spoke out in protest:

"If we let this girl escape, what will happen to the whole village?"

"Yes, if the mountain god punishes us, the whole village will die."

"..."

Among them, Zhou the landlord shouted the loudest:

"Don't let them leave! Surround them!"

Zhou Dahu was the wealthiest household in Baishi Village, owning more than half of the village's fertile land.

His life is worth far more than the lives of these peasants; he absolutely cannot afford to offend the mountain god.

At that moment, a gust of evil wind carrying a foul stench blew in, and heavy footsteps echoed from the main hall of the mountain god temple behind the altar.

A tall, clumsy figure emerged from the main hall.

The visitor was none other than the mountain god of Guniu Mountain—a mountain demon that had become a spirit.

As soon as the mandrill appeared, the villagers present all knelt down on the ground.

The bold lowered their heads and dared not raise them again, while the timid trembled like leaves in fear.

Zhou Chu turned around to look at the sound.

The monster had a ferocious face, was twelve feet long, and had arms that reached past its knees.

"So ugly."

Even though Zhou Chu was mentally prepared, he was still taken aback by the mandrill's appearance.

The mandrill walked up to the altar, gazing at the bulging breasts of the sacrificial girl on the wooden stake, bound tightly with hemp ropes. A trickle of saliva dripped from the corner of its mouth.

Women can satisfy not only his animalistic desires, but also his appetite.

After experiencing the pleasures of a woman a few years ago, it became unable to resist.

It patted Zhou Chu on the shoulder and lowered its head, saying:

"I like this time's offerings."

Zhou Chu's shoulder ached from the slap, and the stench emanating from the mandrill made him reluctant to breathe.

He took a step back and looked up at that hideous face:

"You like it, and I like it too."

The mandrill was surprised upon hearing this, then its eyes flashed with a fierce light.

When it opened its mouth, a foul stench emanated from its mouth, which was full of sharp fangs.

"What did you say?"

Zhou Chu patted the mandrill's long arm heavily:

"This family is quite pitiful. Give me some face and let them go."

Before the words were even finished, the mandrill grabbed Zhou Chu by the collar and lifted him into the air with his feet off the ground:

"Who do you think you are? What right do you have to talk about face? You deserve to die."

At this height, Zhou Chu was directly facing the mandrill's hideous face, and the stench that hit him made him feel nauseous again.

He was about to say something when the mandrill threw him violently to the ground.

Amidst the horrified gazes of the villagers.

Zhou Chu's body flew towards the wall of the mountain god temple like a kite with a broken string.

boom!

The wall collapsed.

Zhou Chu lay on the broken bricks, feeling as if all the bones in his body had been shattered into pieces, and he grimaced in pain.

The force of that impact was almost equivalent to receiving a stroke of good luck.

He struggled to open his eyes.

But then the mountain demon lifted the huge four-legged incense burner on the altar and smashed it down on itself.

That incense burner must weigh at least four or five hundred pounds. How could someone survive if it fell on them?

A monster is a monster; there's no reasoning with it.

If you don't want to give me face, then don't. There's no need to kill someone, is there?

Zhou Chu couldn't move at all, so he steeled himself, lay down, closed his eyes, and waited to die.

But the enormous incense burner did not smash down on him for a long time.

Instead, in the darkness, he saw an ancient book emitting a faint blue light.

The cover of the ancient book appears to be made from a single piece of jade, with five ancient seal characters engraved on it: "The Image of the Formless Void".

Zhou Chu had a sudden thought and flipped the book open, only to find that the first and second pages contained content, while the rest were blank pages.

The first page is a picture of a person sitting cross-legged, with small words written above it:

【Dragon-Shaped Guiding Exercises (Beginner's Guide)】

[Having cultivated for five years]

According to memory, this was the technique the original owner used to temper her bones and muscles.

As soon as Zhou Chu's consciousness stirred, he entered the painting and transformed into the person in the painting, involuntarily beginning to breathe.

After an unknown amount of time, the pain in Zhou Chu's head and body gradually disappeared.

At the same time, he could clearly feel his shattered bones reassembling and his damaged flesh slowly repairing itself.

After a long time, Zhou Chu's body miraculously recovered completely.

When his consciousness returned, Zhou Chu opened his eyes and saw that the huge incense burner was already flying in mid-air, heading straight for him.

In an instant, he closed his eyes again, and his consciousness once again entered the illusion of the "Tai Xu Wu Xiang Tu".

He was surprised to discover that as long as he entered the illusion, time in the outside world would be frozen.

In other words, no matter how much time passes in the illusion, the outside world is only a blink of an eye for him.

Is this the golden finger given by the Great Fortune Immortal?

Theoretically speaking, as long as you close your eyes, the incense burner will never hit you.

Life or death, it's just a matter of whether he opens or closes his eyes.

Um, Schrödinger's eyes...

But what difference is there between hiding in this illusory world and death?